Very very funny post on the joys of daytime TV.:

“JERRY – so Haley, you’re clearly a stripper in lingerie we’ve hired to come on today, tell us about your fetish, which we’ve just made up for you.

HALEY – I like to kiss girls wearing lipstick – here’s my friend/colleague Karly to demonstrate.

Enter KARLY, in lingerie – they kiss.

CROWD – Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

JERRY – Okay, you’re here to tell your boyfriend your dark secret – let’s bring him on!

Enter BIG FAT REVOLTING MEATHEAD

CROWD – Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

MEATHEAD – Hi Jerry.

JERRY – Haley, tell Meathead your secret.

HALEY – I like to kiss girls wearing lipstick. This is Karly.

KARLY – Hi.

MEATHEAD – [gurgling noises]

JERRY – How do you feel, Meathead?……………..” [read the rest]

Excellent stuff, but Mat… you said you weren’t watching daytime TV ;)

Hmmmm… kind of typically I get my first ever server downtime two days into edublogs.org. Am assured that it’ll all be up and running asap though (and for a similar or loger period) so please bear with me.

Hopefully most of you are asleep or away anyway :o)

All sorted! And here’s a nice way to get back on track:

“RSS came into my life this week. With it came a posting about edublogs and within a minute, I was blogging. I can’t believe how easy it is to start. Now let’s see what I can do. Thanks, James!” [random mind]

It’s a pleasure :o)

Wow… Todd has been doing some amazing things with Scuttle and the latest – am I about to be proved wrong… wouldn’t be the first time :o) – is social bookmarking for educators.

He’s currently looking for testers, so head over there and see what you think… it’s going to be interesting to say the least!

61 blogs and counting… now, if you wanted to do the world a great big favour you could help spread the word!

Basically It’d be great if people could:

-Share edublogs.org with any education / academia related listservs or email groups they belong to (I don’t belong to any… so that’s really up to you!)

-Spread edublogs.org around your campus, school, organisation or friends

-Take the plunge yourself and set up an edublog today!

Please feel free to introduce it entirely how you would see fit… or use the ‘press release’ (:o) below:

**********

The launch of http://edublogs.org

http://edublogs.org is an totally unique project aimed at teachers, researchers, writers and educators the world over.

Basically you get to set up a free WordPress blog, 10MB of upload space (extending to much much more down the line), an enormous stack of beautiful themes and to be part of a unique community.

You could use a blog to record and annotate important resources and ideas, to propose and discuss anything under the sun, to progressively develop your thesis, to publicise and discuss your publications with the world or just to develop your digital identity.

Either way, http://edublogs.org is a no-strings-attached, open source, ongoing and freely available service for you and you’re invited to take part!

If you’ve got any questions, please feel free to contact James Farmer at james[at]edublogs(dot)org

**********

There’s another 20 themes on the stack… this is getting rather addictive.

Have also added Stephen’s article to the about page, excellent introdiction.

So… howabout you email all your faculty, colleagues, and friends and suggest that if they’ve toyed with the idea of having a blog, now is the time they can get one of the best… gratis… at edublogs.org.

edublogs.org is going pretty well, 36 hours into the project and there are 37 new blogs so if we keep this up there should be, um, a lot coming very soon :o)

I’ve also added a ‘most active’ blogs list to the site (can’t quite figure out how to get the blog name in their yet… but working on it :o)… go and check it out.

I could do with a bit of a hand though too… first up, can anyone think of a good logo?

Secondly… is it crying out for any features?

All help much appreciated!

Well, finally the completely obvious thing to do dawned on me.

WPMU + edublogs.org = Free education blogs for anyone who darn well wants them.

And that’s about it really.

WPMU at edublogs.org provides anyone who wants it with a free version of the latest (checkout 1.6!) version of WordPress.

First up you’ll get the domain http://yourdomain.edublogs.org

Then you’ll get 10MB (initially) of completely free upload space… plus unlimited MySQL (i.e. posts) space.

And with the new version of WPMU you also get to choose any one of a number of bloody great WordPress Themes (just contact me if you want a particular one pre-installed). In a few weeks you’ll be able to edit them too!

Until the time that some philanthropic educational organisation comes and takes this over (that’s an invitation BTW!) this will be entirely supported by incsub and donations. No ads, no fees, no business model…. ahhh makes me smile :o)

So if you know any teachers, students, researchers, writers or ANYONE interested in education… let them know that they can start their edublog at edublogs.org.

This is gonna be fun!

• i d e a n t: Alternatives to Extremism: An Indonesian Travelogue
  Brilliant.

Part II of my v. summarised series, How you SHOULD use blogs in education, is now online at Blogsavvy.

Please do visit and let me know if you agree / add any other significant tips that I’ve missed!

Well, as of about 7.30PM last night I now hold dual nationality… and responsibilities! Now… for the ashes :o)